American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History, also known as the National History Museum, is a museum located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. It was established on 6 April 1869 by Governor John Thompson Hoffman, and the original museum building opened in 1877. Now located in Theodore Roosevelt Park on 79th Street, the museum complex comprises 28 interconnected buildings, 45 permanent exhibition halls, a planetarium, a library, over 33 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts. The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, and there are about 5 million visits annually.